Pathways in Performance (in and around Cambodia)?

Abstract

Standing in the middle of an empty four-lane boulevard, official roadblocks just visible in the background, a lone woman begins to dance. The repeated swooping of her arms accentuates the emptiness of the street around her; her unshakeable smile belies and underscores the eeriness of the scene. At the time of making this performance and video (fig. 1)[1] the four lanes of Phnom Penh’s Sihanouk Boulevard, like many of the Cambodian capital’s main thoroughfares, were closed to traffic in the tense aftermath of the 2013 national elections, the result of which was disputed. The performance and video is the project of a collaborative duo called Studio Revolt, which was at the time based in Phnom Penh, and which includes Anida Yoeu Ali (born 1974), an artist who describes herself as “a first generation Muslim Khmer woman born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago.”[2] As the artists explain in text that appears on a black screen before the dancer is revealed, this is a moment in which “Both parties declare victory / Barricades go up on the main street / It’s time to dance.”